Business Process Hygiene: No Business Case Needed
In an interview with George Lawton for SearchCIO, prof.dr.ir. Wil van der Aalst coined the term "Business Process Hygiene" (or short "Process Hygiene") for the first time.
Process mining should be as normal as personal hygiene and not require a business case. Activities such as brushing your teeth, washing your hands after going to the toilet, and changing clothes do not require a business case. Process mining can be seen as the means to ensure process hygiene. Objectively monitoring and analyzing key processes is important for the overall health and well-being of an organization. Process hygiene should not require a business case. Not using process mining is a sign of self-neglect showing an inability or unwillingness to manage processes properly. Hence, not using process mining should require a justification and not the other way around. Using data quality and privacy concerns as reasons to not conduct process mining should be considered as poor hygiene leading to "smelly processes".